The Case against Caucuses

On Saturday May 15, 2023, a brawl broke out at the Minneapolis Ward 10 convention to determine who would earn the Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party (DFL) endorsement for the Minneapolis Ward 10 City Council race.

Several people went to the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.

For context, here is a map of the 13 Minneapolis wards.

Ward 10 is located in Central West Minneapolis. It is home to a portion of the Uptown area and hosts the eastern part of Lake Bde Maka Ska.

The current city councilmember is Aisha Chughtai, a councilmember who has a background in union organizing and whose family experienced significant instability during the 2008 financial crisis. Here is her MinnPost candidate profile during the 2021 municipal Minneapolis races.

I will say I have a hard time feeling sorry for people who threatened my and others’ safety on numerous other occasions when they are subsequently on the receiving end of violence or misfortune.

All of this is to lay the groundwork for making it clear I don’t exactly have a great history with councilmember Chughtai and thus establishing my credibility to make this point.

The candidate responsible for the violence at the Ward 10 convention was councilmember Chughtai’s opponent, Nasri Warsame.

Intentionally or not on his part, it was his supporters who started the violence, his supporters who threw the first blows.

But this is not the first time something went catastrophically wrong at a caucus, nor is this the first caucus where people came to blows.

Last year, a candidate (then Representative Erin Maye Quade), lost the DFL endorsement at her caucus when her opponent took advantage of her going into labor.

Also, this is not the first time that caucuses have descended into violence.

Other mundane but quite serious problems include that caucuses and conventions always start late and go past deadlines. Typically, hours are spent debating the rules when in reality, they should be decided well before the meeting so the main business can get underway.

It is an unwieldy, clunky, classist, ableist, and racist way of selecting candidates that has lived past its shelf life.

The Case against Caucuses

The caucus system by design is extremely exclusionary. Only a few hundred people get to decide who gets the nomination depending on the office being sought. For offices like a city council race, it’s often around one hundred people at best.

Typically, the people who make these decisions are not subject-matter experts in anything related to governance, policy, or politics; they are people who have extreme dedication to specific candidates or opinions. It’s always the same people in every caucus and in every neighborhood.

Thanks to the time commitment that caucuses require (hours and entire days), people who have to work or care for dependents (like children or sick relatives) are excluded from caucusing. Even if you can find the time, the rules surrounding caucusing are quite confusing to an outsider. Even I, someone who grew up with caucuses here in Minnesota, still can have a difficult time with their rules.

By contrast, a primary ballot is straightforward. Fill in the blank next to the candidate you want.

And I can see that the current system in place principally benefits people like me, a White man who grew up in politics, owns a car, has no dependents, and speaks English as a first language. I am in many ways the ultimate insider.

If you are a person of color, if you speak English as a second language, if you don’t have access to a car, if you have dependents you have to take care of, caucuses are systematically stacked against you.

Those of you in the comments who have experienced caucuses know all about their downsides: how easy it is to intimidate people without the privacy of a polling booth or just how long they can take.

Quite importantly, from a purely logistical standpoint, it is a lot easier for a caucus to go catastrophically wrong than it is for a primary to do so. One temper getting out of control, a misunderstanding, or a technical mishap can doom the entire operation. The caucus system also requires enormous amounts of work just to run properly, efforts that could be put to better use by investing in campaigns to get more women, people of color, and LGBT candidates into office in general elections.

By contrast, primaries are much easier to carry out from a logistical point of view and require far less work for a more inclusive process.

But most importantly, caucuses are by their very nature exclusionary and do not test a candidate’s ability to run an actual campaign.

Political campaigns must be able to persuade hundreds at the low end, but more often thousands of people with conflicting priorities and views. These voters often represent loyal Democrats, but they often do not have the time or energy to devote to a caucus.

Contrary to what people may say, being able to fundraise is an important part of campaigning. Trevor and many of you know just how hard political campaigning is, as do I.

I am of the opinion that all campaign staff are entitled to compensation for their hard work,

Which has made me cross from merely disliking Paul Vallas into hating him.

By the way, hiring professionals to do various jobs will not only ensure good work (more often than not), it will also open up a world of political participation to those who may traditionally be excluded from it.

Volunteering is great, but it is traditionally reserved for those who have the time, money, and energy for it. It is far better to rely on paid professionals to do jobs, plus it is more humane.

It is time to drop this antiquated, inefficient, classist, and racist system and switch over to primaries all over America.